Why does Wikipedia need donations?

Currently they are begging for users to donate money again. I think this is fuking stupid, a website as big as Wikipedia doesn't need donations. How hard is it to put in unobtrusive advertising so they can pay their own bills? Pretty much all of the database is filled out by unpaid people with free time on their hands. Wikipedia shouldn't be asking those same people to keep the server alive.

Would you really care if you saw a small banner or side ad on wikipedia? I'm sure most if you use adblock anyway, but i'm sure the average consumer wouldn't care either.

99/100 people wouldn't give a damn. However, that 1/100 would scream so loud that it seemed like 132/100 people were nearly driven to suicide over the issue.

Because advertising could lead to bias in what is intended to be an unbiased compilation of human knowledge?

gez this isn't rocket science....

@JangoWuzHere: Wait, so while most people on the internet are complaining about sites having ads you're complaining about a site who refuses to get ads and instead asks for donations that you are free not to give? Sounds like a legitimate complaint...

QFT.

I fucking hate when NPR begs for donations ever 3 months for a whole week every 3 minutes. The way they do it is horrific.

As big as Wikipedia it's funny that they still don't know how to pay the bills LOL! I don't give a damn and I'm not paying for something when I can go to another website and get the exact same information, they need to figure out another way to get money because people are not falling for it or I don't care close the website at least I won't hear their begging anymore.

Yep, those idiots. They can close their website, I'll just go to the other websites that copy their information from wikipedia...oh wait...

Also, people are definitely "falling for it" since their donation plea is successful every year.

Advertising isn't always the answer.

And why do you care? It's free to use for everyone, just ignore their attempt to get your money (which you obviously aren't willing to give since you are so adamantly against it).

Why anyone would get upset enough to create a thread about this is beyond me. Who. Da. ****. Cares?

Wikipedia has failed in the past to meet donation goals. Sometimes a big company like Google has to come in and bail them out at the very end. Users shouldn't have to feel scared that their favorite information website could be taken down because they refuse a little bit of advertizing.

idiots care

Wikipedia could probably get away with it since Wikia is ran on banner ads but with the amount of people who have Adblock you can replace the occasional request for a donation with banners shaming you for using Adblock and taking away from their revenue.

If you live in a first world country it won't kill you to give them five or ten bucks every once in awhile. In fact, thanks to your post I just gave them ten bucks before posting this reply. They even have a deal to give people in some countries free access on their mobile phones so it doesn't count against their data limit.

Wikipedia is probably one of the best projects ever to hit the Internet and while some of their policies may lean towards political correctness most of everything else is untouched by the possible corruption of advertisement dollars.

I'll e mail Wikipedia man and tell him about how angelfire is free and fix this Internet!

This is a very good point.

Company X wouldn't agree to advertise on Wikipedia if Wikipedia's Company X page had a long "controversy" section.

Knowing how many pages Wikipedia has, I imagine most of money goes to maintaining servers. Buying server space is cheap nowadays, but finding an area to keep them is what is expensive. Also, they need to pay off the programmers and engineers of the site as I imagine they work quite a bit to make sure the site doesn't break.

I'm just assuming though, I could be wrong.

Ad-free

#6 on Alexa

How the **** would they stay alive if they didn't take donations?

/thread

No more comments needed.

Wikipedia is actually somewhat cheap considering its one of the most used websites in the world. Most of the expenses come from server usage for sure. I believe they have less then a hundred people maintaining and running the website. A site like Amazon or Youtube has thousands of people working on it daily.

I imagine that the people behind Wikipedia are mostly non-profit, and that's fine. However, imagine the money they could make each year off of simple advertisement. They won't have to beg for money from users and they could donate the money they don't want to organizations that need support. Instead, Wikipedia has this rallying of fear that wikipedia could go away without your support. I think it's lame, and I find it more far more obstructing then a simple banner ad.

That's not very kawaii of you.

So banner ads are ok, but a banner ad asking you to donate is bad?

Because the website and the organization behind it aren't going to run themselves? The founder of the website has reiterated his desire to keep the place ads-free which is both admirable and fitting of such a website. As a general rule of thumb Internet ads are all shitty and obtrusive since they slow down loading times regardless of the nature of their contents and their different formats. Besides its a slippery slope once the website adopts the use of ads for revenues and self-sustainability it will inevitably degenerate to a cesspool of intrusive and possibly biased and partial ads of various agendas.

I can't donate myself but if I could I'd definitely donate and I generally speaking think twice before approve of donations elicitation by an individual or organization.

If they switched to banner ads he could use Adblock so he won't see it. The banner asking for donations is still visible when using Adblock so he doesn't want them asking for donations anymore.

Or at least that is what I got from the original post.

That's not what I'm getting to at all. That is a leap in logic I don't understand how you made.

This is all assumption as far as I'm concerned. Wikipedia is so big now that individual advertising companies wouldn't pose a threat to the website.

I for one am glad they are using this model.

And frankly, considering they have given the world (you included) a framework that has enabled one of the largest repositories of information ever compiled on Earth, one that scientific studies have found as reliable as not-free-encyclopedias, all for the price of FREE...well let's just say your OP comes of as kinda douche-y.

MS should buy Wikipedia, then they can add a subscription fee. I kid, I kid.

I don't know, but I never had money to donate anyway... lots of websites made money by add. or maybe it should be somekind of profits sharing.

Here's why they need donations, straight from their website.

"Wikipedia is the #5 site on the web and serves 500 million different people every month – with billions of page views. Commerce is fine. Advertising is not evil. But it doesn't belong here. Not in Wikipedia. Wikipedia is something special. It is like a library or a public park. It is like a temple for the mind. It is a place we can all go to think, to learn, to share our knowledge with others. When I founded Wikipedia, I could have made it into a for-profit company with advertising banners, but I decided to do something different. We’ve worked hard over the years to keep it lean and tight. We fulfill our mission efficiently."

A wikipedia without ads is better then a wikipedia with ads. The site is designed to help provide knowledge to it's users, not to make money. And just because you hate donations to wikipedia TC, I went ahead and donated $5 just for you!

I actually don't care who you donate to. I just don't think Wikipedia needs donations. Wikipedia is on the internet, so the rules are different for revenue as a result. Instead of barely scraping by each year, they could be earning money to keep the servers alive. They can also use that extra money to make the servers better and provide a faster and better user experience. Other organizations need donations because they have no other option. Wikipedia needs donations because they just want donations.

Yeah, I'm not liking OP. Hating on Wikipedia is a no-no.

Since this seems to be bothering the TC so much and since I forgot to donate last year I just donated 100€ (about 125 dollars) to Wikipedia so that the donation can be over sooner and hopefully the TC can rest easy.

Thank you so much for contributing to Wikipedia's donation effort, you already got 3 people (at least) to donate. You should work for them!

@korvus: I too have never donated to Wiki until today because of the TC. Keep up the good work

Advertising lessens credibility. Wikipedia wants to retain it. You really think it's a good idea to have Wikipedia be held hostage by advertisers? Sounds stupid to me.

Wikipedia's already pretty biased and I wouldn't rule out that they're being paid on the sly on a number of topics.

..........lol

I just donated $5 to Wikipedia after OC is complaining about using a free site that requires donations to run. It seems like the OC doesnt know about the cost of running a website, hiring employees and fixing or upgrading equipment. Not just Google would donate to Wikipedia, but other silicon valley companies would well as a way to write off taxes.

I wonder what would happen if Wikipedia became a subscription based website. People were to pay $5 a year to be able to view any content listed, so that way anyone who is a cheap stake wouldn't feel the need to be entitled.